'On Life and Death: Marina Abramović and Hans Ulrich Obrist in Conversation' – AnOther

14 September 2023

Ahead of her show at London’s Royal Academy, Marina Abramović speaks with friend, curator and critic, Hans Ulrich Obrist about her teaching methods, the threat of technology, and her close brush with death

This is my 18th conversation with Marina Abramović. It’s a conversation about some big themes of art – death, hope, life, fear. And these themes are, of course, at the core of her practice.

Our first recorded conversation took place on a bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka in the 1990s. We travelled together through Japan for a conference at the Center for Contemporary Art Kitakyushu. Since then there have been conversations on trains, in train stations, in cars, hotel rooms, over games of dominoes, in opera houses and so on.

The next instalment of our conversation will take place while she crosses the sea by boat to come to Europe for her show at London’s Royal Academy, opening in September. As we discuss here, she cannot currently travel by plane. This will be my first boat conversation – a conversation on the slow-move.

Marina never works on just one thing – it’s like in quantum physics: there are always multiple parallel realities, many dimensions to her work at one time. While she is focusing on the Royal Academy show, her institute’s curated group show at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall and her opera, 7 Deaths of Maria Callas, at English National Opera will also open in London this autumn. Then there are several artist books and publications, even her own line of beauty products incoming – her own brand, in a way.

Read in full via AnOther Magazine.

Marina Abramović photographed by Jordan Hemmingway